Drug distribution rates also show the racial crossover effect

Evidence

Evidence of a racial crossover effect in drug distribution is also evident in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (“NLSY97”), which collects yearly data from a national sample of U.S. residents, who were between the ages twelve and sixteen in 1997 when the data collection began. This survey reveals that, at age sixteen, 7 percent of White and 5.3 percent of Black NLSY97 respondents indicated that they had sold illegal drugs in the past year but, at age twenty-six, these figures were 4.2 percent and 5.1 percent for White and Black respondents, respectively. Again, these differences are too small to explain the large race differences in drug distribution arrests and imprisonment. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1056

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Self-reported drug distribution differences between races are too small to explain arrest disparities (similarity 0.95)
• Racial disparities in drug enforcement do not track actual racial differences in drug behavior (similarity 0.88)
• Measured drug-use data contradict both the offending-explanation and the equal-offending counterclaim (similarity 0.84)
• Even after declines, drug arrest rates remain nearly double their 1980 baseline. (similarity 0.84)
• The War on Drugs did not create but vastly amplified existing racial disparities (similarity 0.83)
• The War on Drugs amplified but did not create drug imprisonment disparities. (similarity 0.83)
• Post-2000s drug incarceration racial disparities contracted as Black arrests fell (similarity 0.82)
• Fed crack sentencing statistics show racial targeting rather than differential drug use (similarity 0.82)
• Drug-offense racial disparities resist explanation by actual offending differences (similarity 0.82)
• Drug arrest declines concentrate among African Americans while White rates shift little. (similarity 0.82)
• Recent drug sanction declines come almost entirely from reduced Black arrest rates (similarity 0.81)
• Drug enforcement intensity, not offending, drives racial disparities in sanctions (similarity 0.81)
• Policymakers, courts, and sentencing reforms together produced racialized drug enforcement. (similarity 0.80)
• Policing practices, not drug laws, drive most racial disparities in sanctions (similarity 0.80)
• Mass incarceration stemmed from policy changes, not crime or racial drug differences (similarity 0.79)